


Take and Give

by birdinastorm



Category: Star Trek: Discovery
Genre: Food and Feelings, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-26
Updated: 2019-03-26
Packaged: 2019-12-18 03:45:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,777
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18241712
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/birdinastorm/pseuds/birdinastorm
Summary: Hugh feels empty, not even capable of small emotions about objects let alone something so massive that it engulfs you, like grief does. He wishes, absently, that he could grieve his old life. His old life is so distant that it’s unrecognizable, like how the sun from the exoplanets looks like just another star, yet its gravity is what holds them there.  He sits there, trapped in his empty room, unmoving, for nearly half an hour. A thought boils up and then simmers there. He could talk to Ash, actually talk to him. The idea is a good one, because it makes him feel.Hugh wrestles with the nature of his existence, mostly over food and with (mostly) good company.





	Take and Give

**Author's Note:**

> I didn't go to Memory Alpha for this fic, and you cannot make me.

Hugh sits in his new room. It’s a single, which is something of a miracle, as extra room is nearly unheard of on a starship. His old things are all packed away tightly in latched crates, which are still stacked on a dolly he hasn’t returned to the deck’s tool bay. All these old things that Paul kept, in the inertia of grief, things that he should feel something about. Hugh feels empty, not even capable of small emotions about objects let alone something so massive that it engulfs you, like grief does. He wishes, absently, that he could grieve his old life. His old life is so distant that it’s unrecognizable, like how the sun from the exoplanets looks like just another star, yet its gravity is what holds them there. He sits there, trapped in his empty room, unmoving, for nearly half an hour. A thought boils up and then simmers there. He could talk to Ash, actually talk to him. The idea is a good one, because it makes him feel. It’s an awful feeling, a mixture of disgust and morbid curiosity. He might even do it, because he knows Ash is terrified of him. He saw it when he attacked him in the mess, he sees it whenever Ash catches sight of him in the hall. The terror has nothing to do with Hugh, it’s only the shame of his own actions that terrifies Ash. Just to see that terror again, he rises and sets off to find his murderer. 

It’s night on the deck. The lights are low and warm colored. He was moved off of Ash’s deck so that they wouldn’t have to see each other, but not so far that he was moved into another shift. It’s always day somewhere on the ship. Why he thinks he can find Ash in the middle of the night, he doesn’t know, but moving feels better than sleeplessness in his blank quarters. 

He can hear someone shuffling around in the mess. He smiles a bit. Scaring him here again would be fun, if that is in fact him. As he enters he’s shocked that his intuition was correct. Ash is leaning over a replicator and turns around with a tray of what looks like noodles, sees Hugh and starts badly enough that noodles slosh over one side of the bowl. 

“Culber!” he shakes his head, “You scared me!” He sits down and plucks up some noodles and plops them back in. Hugh just watches him in his discomfort for a few moments before approaching and asking him if he can sit down. Ash reluctantly waves his hand in acquiescence. Hugh notices that the noodles aren’t actually noodles, they’re long, worm-like animals. One is still stuck to the outside of the bowl. It has tiny, glittering eyes like fish. Ash watches him staring. “This dish comes from the replicator’s diplomacy menu. All of the Klingon dishes are too fancy for daily meals, but I like them anyway.”

“That’s why you’re here, you wouldn’t order that when everyone else is around,” Hugh says, finally tired of watching Ash squirm in silence. 

Ash laughs nervously. “You’re right. Why don’t you tell me why you’re here.” 

“I wanted to talk to you… Tyler,” says Hugh. At the sound of his human name Ash relaxes somewhat. “You, of all people, might be the only person who can make sense of what I’m feeling. I certainly can’t, my therapist tries, but she can’t make it make sense either.” Ash nods along, slowly putting worms in a deep spoon, head down, focused on the food. 

“And what can I help you understand?” he says, his voice strained. An offer to help, a challenge, a trial. 

“I want to understand how I can be, and live as, two different people,” Hugh says. 

Ash keeps nodding, as if he’s soothing himself. “Okay. You were listening to me. Do you really feel that way? You have no connection with your old life?”

“The old life feels utterly alien to me.”

Ash laughs, a short, curt, despairing laugh. “If you think your old life is alien—“ Ash shakes his head. The spoon full of worms in his hand is trembling. 

“I know,” Hugh says in frustration, “I’m not trying to mock you.” The two men stare at each other. “Do you want to help me or not?”

“Are you ready to accept my help if I can give it?” Ash responds, equally frustrated. 

A part of me still wants to strangle you, Hugh thinks, but he says, “Yes.”

“Let me eat first,” Ash says cooly, and carefully sips the worms out of the spoon. Hugh turns in his chair so he doesn’t have to watch. Ash finishes the bowl and pushes the tray aside. “If you want to keep talking, come to my room.” Hugh turns and sees Ash rising to leave. “I do want to help you,” he says. He leaves Hugh sitting in the empty mess.

Hugh stands outside Ash’s door, undecided. Wasn’t it enough to try talking to him once? His mind is wrapped in a fog of fatigue, it’s too much to have to think about every move, it’s exhausting to be without habits, or routines, or anything that feels comfortable. He knocks, his knuckles clashing painfully on the door. Why did he do that? The door slides open and Ash is there looking irritated. “You had to pound on my door?”

“Sorry, my instincts are off.” He slides in. 

The room is bare, but the lights are red and gold, to give it a cozy atmosphere. Ash’s desk is covered in files and a slate and in the corner opposite sits the bed, perfectly made. 

“You’ve been awake this whole time?” Hugh says with a distantly familiar tone of concern, as if he were talking to a patient. 

“The days are longer on Qo’nos and I have a Klingon’s nervous system with a Klingon’s circadian rhythm, so I tend not to sleep much at all,” Ash says wearily. He sits at the desk and invites Hugh to sit on the bed. 

“You remember being Klingon?” 

“I remember it now. The two parts of me were grafted together, but they were mostly unaware of each other. A few things leaked over into my consciousness, but as memories that made no sense to me, filtered as they were through human concepts. It wasn’t until I went to L’Rell to have what she did to me partially reversed that I remembered being Voq. What she did destroyed him as a separate entity.” 

“So you became… integrated? One identity?”

“Not exactly. I was afraid that, when L’Rell broke the barriers between us that Voq would take over. But he didn’t, instead I simply began to remember things. More and more things came to me over time, in layers, in eras. I don’t know how to describe it. Sort of like how a dying star gives off layers of stellar material, so Voq disintegrated, laying bare his life, until only an unknowable core is left, of things he would not even tell himself. Everything I remember gets filtered through my own experiences, so that even if it was a life I lead, relating to it can sometimes be difficult or impossible.”

“So that’s why you call yourself Ash Tyler.” 

Ash nods. “I tried to be Voq, I at least tried to be Klingon, but it’s difficult to be there and access the ruthlessness required, when my human body is how I interact with the universe. I’m not separate from the revulsions it feels, that are born of my experience being Ash.”

“Why did you try to be Voq at all?” Hugh hisses. 

“I woke up one day and was told I had killed someone. From that day on I considered my humanity, what shred of it I had left in this body, forfeit.” Ash bows his head to hide his face, and runs his hands through his hair nervously. “I thought it would be better to leave the Federation entirely, to protect what I valued from myself. I came back because I could not annihilate my values, my experiences, or my memories, and I could not live in a place where my humanity was treated only as a miserable weakness. I can’t be one or the other, no matter what I try, I am what I am.” He looks up at Hugh and asks, “Is this helping? At all? You’re asking all the questions here.”

“No, but I understand you better. I’m sorry, but I can’t listen to you anymore. It’s clear both of us have lost so much, but I can’t. Goodbye.” Hugh leaves the room as quickly as he’s able, and outside the door laughs ruefully to himself. He tries to shake the tension from his body, and decides to jog slowly around the deck.

All throughout that brief conversation Hugh’s heart had been pounding. The thought of going back to his room revolts him, almost as much as Tyler. A potent cocktail of pity and hatred poisons his blood. Instead he circles the deck and ends up at the gym. He never really spent any time here, in his old life he preferred running. He’s not alone here, unsurprisingly, as stress from work drives people into strange habits, but he is surprised to see that the late-night gym rat is Spock. The Vulcan is doing something that to his eye looks like tai-chi, but with some quicker motions. He spots Hugh and nods almost imperceptibly at him in acknowledgement, and goes back to his routine. 

Hugh, not knowing his own intentions, walks up to Spock. Spock stays silent, waiting for Hugh to speak. 

“Hello, I’m Hugh.” He holds out his hand to shake for a second before remembering that he’s addressing a Vulcan, and puts his hands behind his back. 

“Hello Mr Culber,” he responds. 

“So you’re aware of my situation?”

“Yes,” says Spock equally, “I’m aware of the unprecedented nature of your life.”

“Then there’s nothing in Vulcan knowledge about anything like what happened to me? That’s what I wanted to speak to you about.”

“No,” says Spock, but he turns towards Hugh and considers him more carefully. “Perhaps you can speak of your experiences, and maybe I will then be able to identify some of my Vulcan knowledge that can be of use.”

“When people call me Hugh, they’re trying to call out someone I barely remember. They remember him, he’s gone. His body is here, and it’s in the network. That was not my body. This is my body.” 

Spock takes a rather long time to digest this. Hugh bounces on his feet impatiently. Finally he says, “What I’m about to tell you has always been kept between Vulcan families. It is perhaps not my place to give this knowledge away, so please keep it between us.” Hugh looks at Spock wonderingly. “Your situation is so unique, that the only near analogue I can determine is the katra.”

“Katra?”

“Yes, the katra and the katra’s vessel. When a Vulcan is near death they may elect to transfer their katra to another sentient being. You might call a katra a soul, but unlike the concept of souls, katras are observable phenomena. The katra lives on in the vessel until it can be transferred again to a temple, where the katra is maintained indefinitely. It may ease your anxiety to think of the Hugh that people know to be a katra within you, and that you are its vessel, keeping it safe.”

Hugh stared at Spock. “You’re saying that Vulcans have a way around death?” 

“The katra being free of the body it originated from is a part of death, it is not a way around it. The katra was part of the person who died, and it contains their memories, but it is not the person themselves.”

Hugh paced in a circle. “That’s still extraordinary!”

“Humans, with your short life spans and extreme anxiety over death, tend to think of the katra as the most important part of this process, after all, the katra is what remains of someone we cared for. However, it is not a simple thing to carry a katra. The living being must also be honored. For Vulcans, the katra is precious, but no more precious than the being carrying it, for neither would exist without the other.”

He continues to pace. “I guess I have been a little resentful of it, my old life, and of people who won’t let me just live for a moment,” Hugh says. Spock stops watching him and instead looks distant. “At the same time I’ve been beating myself up for not being able to happily pick my old life back up.”

“It is understandable. We sometimes have unreasonable expectations of ourselves, and other people are quick to have unreasonable expectations of us, mostly for their own comfort.” Spock looks right at Hugh, a glint of warmth in his eyes. Hugh smiles. Of course Spock would know a little bit about expectations. Their moment of connection passes, Spock looks away. 

“Now I have to ask you what you’re doing up, since I already asked Tyler.” 

Spock raises an eyebrow, but doesn’t take the bait. “Micheal is annoying me, so I’m taking extra time today to center myself.”

“She’s annoying you? An annoyed Vulcan?”

“I am perfectly capable of being annoyed,” Spock says evenly. 

“Good to know,” Hugh laughs. “Thank you for speaking with me.” Spock inclines his head slightly, and immediately resumes his exercises. The adrenaline spike he got from talking to Tyler had all drained away, and he suddenly feels exhausted. He leaves the gym and practically stumbles into bed, and sleeps solidly throughout the night, dreamless. 

◈

Hugh wakes up suddenly, feeling as if no time passed. Very awake and restless, he walks to the mess, the corridor lights are still a bit low, as if dawn were arriving. In the mess there are a few crew bumbling about sleepily. He spots Ensign Tilly at a table by herself and decides to go sit with her, even though she’s not someone he knows all that well, having only a vague recollection of her constantly being in Paul’s lab. 

“May I sit here?” he asks, and Tilly looks up in surprise. 

“Oh, Dr Culber— oh I’m sorry, it’s just Culber. Hugh. Hi.” Tilly presses her fingertips to her temples, silently punishing herself for her mistake. 

“It’s alright. Ensign Tilly, correct?” Hugh says, inwardly amused. 

“Yes! Uh, would you like to have some of my croissant?” Tilly pushes a little plate with a pastry towards Hugh. 

“I can replicate one—“

“No! I mean, you can, but if you do, that’s not sharing and I want to share,” Tilly says quickly, “because it’s nice and you’ve been having a hard time.”

“Thank you,” Hugh says and picks a corner off of it. 

“This is my treat breakfast, since I got a lot of data from the Sphere catalogued yesterday. Getting information from that thing into a searchable format is like a full time job, and I have to do it on top of all the stuff Stamets has me doing in the mycelium lab.”

“That sounds like a lot.”

Tilly nods vigorously. “I think Starfleet must attract all the people who are willing to sacrifice literally every second of their day to their work, and be happy about it.” 

“Med students are already like that, imagine being a med student looking to fly,” Hugh laughs. 

“So what have you been doing?” Tilly asks lightly, as if the question could have a good answer. There wasn’t really a good answer, because most of what he had been doing was contemplating the purposeless emptiness of his days, and the pain of being unmoored in life, exacerbated by how easily his senses were overwhelmed. 

“I uh— well, I had an interesting night.” He wasn’t going to mention Tyler. “I talked to Spock in the gym.” 

Tilly’s eyes widen.“You talked to Spock?” she says breathlessly, and immediately tries to regain her composure. Hugh watches this minor drama with a wry smile creeping across his face.

“You know, you could talk to him, it’s not that hard.” 

“Are you kidding me? I share a room with Burnham, he was in there one day and he looked at me once and I just turned around, I was so intimidated.” Hugh ate another little piece of the pastry, still smiling at Tilly. “Listen,” she says in an undertone, “Let me just say that if humans could figure out how to relate to Vulcans more easily, there would be a lot more people like Spock.” Hugh burst out laughing. Tilly shook her head. “I think I’m done embarrassing myself this morning. So what did you talk to him about?”

“You know, I promised him that I would not to tell anyone else,” Hugh says casually. 

“What?” Tilly shrieks, and Hugh laughs even harder. “This is unfair, this is absurdly unfair, why are you even telling me this?” she says, both vehement and playful. 

“But it was a helpful conversation. And this, this one helped a lot too.” 

“It did?” Tilly says, boggled. 

“Yeah, it reminded me that sharing is a kindness.” 

“Right! I always eat croissants with black coffee, would you like some?” Tilly asks. Hugh nods. She comes back promptly with a steaming mug. He takes a sip and screws up his face. 

Tilly laughs, “It is an acquired taste!”

He sits there at their little table, the heavy, bitter taste of coffee in his mouth, he thinks about all he had been through since Tilly convinced the mycelium to reconstitute his body in normal space. He had been afraid to talk to Paul about the depth of his confusion. He had been afraid to accept what Paul and other people were giving him, which were pieces of his old life. He’s ambivalent about sharing this new life with the old one, to the point where he was actively trying to push away anything that reminded him of what once was. It didn’t need to be that way, he could move forward and at the same time hold onto what he had been given, a life passionately lived. 

◈

That night he’s back in his room, facing the crates of his things that he still doesn’t quite have the courage to open. Instead he looks at the time and realizes that if he goes to the mess he’ll probably see Tyler. A thought comes to him, cold and clear, like an invigorating morning. He gets up and goes to the mess. 

He can’t read the diplomacy menu, turns out. Well, he can read it, but none of the words mean anything. There’s no one here yet, he could end up ordering “Red Hirak, high water content (Cooked)” and have to eat it all by himself. He orders it anyway, and squints, trying to look through the replicator’s translucent door to see what he’ll end up with before it’s ready. The replicator opens, revealing a dish in a large shallow bowl, half filled with broth, and floating in the broth is a whole birdlike animal with blood-red scaly legs. He’s suddenly very glad that he didn’t order Red Hirak (Uncooked). He hefts the bowl over to a table and waits. Soon enough a tall lanky figure comes in from the corridor. 

Ash stops short, seeing Hugh, and stares at the bowl for a second, and then looks back at Hugh. He sighs, goes to get two bowls and sits down, handing Hugh a bowl. “You need a special knife to do this properly,” Ash says, and slips a knife out of his uniform. “This is not it,” and proceeds to hack at the bird-creature with what looks like a ceremonial knife nonetheless. “I hope this is not some elaborate forgiveness ritual.”

“It’s not.” Hugh says curtly. 

“Good, because even if you did try to forgive me I would not accept it.” Ash says, while pulling some limbs off of the meat. He plopped two limbs into Hugh’s bowl and poured half of the broth in with them. He himself took the other two and the other half of the broth. The bird creature’s head and tail were left. He pointed at the rest of the meat, “You’re supposed to eat this with three people.” 

“Give me that stuff then, because we kind of are.” 

“I’ll take half of it, because by that logic there’s four people here.” Ash divided the rest of the carcass in half and gave the tail end to Hugh. They ate in silence for a few minutes. 

“This is actually really good. Kind of like spiced chicken soup,” Hugh says. 

“What are we doing here?” Ash asks.

“I just wanted to reiterate what I said when we last talked. We’ve both lost everything, but somehow, we’re still here. And I thought, maybe that called for a little celebration. Something special.”

Ash leans back from his food and covers his face with his hands. Hugh looks on as Ash cries silently, hiding his face. 

“I don’t de—“ Ash began, and Hugh cut him off saying, “Don’t even say it, don’t even say it.”

Ash leans forward and wipes his face, and keeps eating. “Do you need anything from me?” he says at length. 

“Apologizing would not even begin to cover it,” Hugh says. 

“Agreed, but I apologize anyway. Every day.” 

“But on the other hand it’s like it doesn’t matter. What was done hasn’t been undone. Hugh is still dead.” 

Ash looks up into Hugh’s eyes, absorbing what he said. A terrible understanding. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” he says automatically. They sit in silence. Hugh finishes his broth, while Ash pushes the food away. 

“I don’t want to be angry with you, but I am angry, and I will always be angry because I do remember my old life. If I didn’t remember, I could just live my life, you would just be another person to me. I did this to honor both of those feelings.”

“Thank you for the food. This has been… enlightening, to say the least,” Ash laughs weakly. “And thank you for being forthcoming. I never expected anything but hatred from you, and I needed that hatred, because I’ve spent this whole time hating myself for what happened.”

“We can’t be friends, but shall we say, allies?” Hugh says, looking straight at Ash.

“You had better believe I would do anything to protect you, should it be necessary.” Ash holds out his hand. Hugh hesitates, but takes it. “Allies then.” Ash smiles.


End file.
